


This Is Our Last Dance (the Under Pressure remix)

by actonbell



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alzheimer's Disease, Avengers Compound, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, BARF (Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing), Chaos Magic, Dementia, Dubious Science, F/M, Fake Science, Is it live or is it Memorex?, Memory Alteration, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), The Stork Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-06-28 07:35:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15702729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: "The line between flesh and thought, electrical-neuro-chemical impulses and emotions, is extraordinarily thin. There is the possibility of altering the amyloid process in Director Carter's brain, clearing away the damage already done -- remove the existing physical plaques, without surgery, and stop plaque production, manipulating the chemicals involved in information processing. But this would not 'merely' be a type of highly advanced neurosurgery," Vision said, and went on about Einstein and the exchange of energy and matter and how the study of memory had long proven that it was possible to not only implant 'false' memories in a mind, but convince the subject those memories were real. Tony tapped his foot very gently against Steve's toes, not the obnoxious earlier bumping. Steve refused to move away and give Tony the satisfaction of knowing he'd gotten to Steve, again."A week, next Saturday, at the Stork Club. Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late."





	This Is Our Last Dance (the Under Pressure remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [It's Time to Dance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15473097) by [spellboundreader316](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spellboundreader316/pseuds/spellboundreader316). 



> This work contains a character with Alzheimer's disease, and discussions of how that affects her brain and possible treatments.

"No," Steve said. "No -- no, no." He didn't raise his voice, but he didn't need to; years of giving orders and knowing other people would carry them out had given a certain tone of authority to his voice, one he tried not to use on the team too often, but this was a perfect example of how things were getting out of control. He knew they all remembered what had happened in Johannesburg and Sokovia, he wouldn't insult them by bringing it up, but -- 

This was a good team, maybe the best he'd been on since the Howlies -- Vision and Wanda were the obvious powerhouses, but Sam and Rhodey complemented each other beautifully in the air, and he and Romanoff were key on the ground, with Sam and Rhodey as their air support. Nat was the best hand-to-hand fighter he'd ever seen, and basically his lieutenant, although they'd never had any ranks or clear chain of command. Bucky had always teased him about that, back in the day, because of course Phillips had basically freed him and Peggy and the rest of them up to do almost as they pleased -- but there had been clear objectives, a greater plan, the bigger picture. Nat was loyal, but she didn't follow him, and she had her own priorities. And Tony delighted in dropping in unannounced, poking holes in Steve's arguments for the sheer joy of finding them, offering miraculous upgrades that distracted everyone from their training and made him into a year-round Santa Claus. It was equally charming and exasperating (both those things outweighed for Steve by how easy it was to slip up and call him _Howard,_ then). But Steve would take whole weeks of bickering and power plays and ridiculous plans about his shield or Sam's wings, over this.

They all weren't even given a vote, which Sharon had to rub in right at that moment -- she and Maria had actually flown up from their respective cities rather than teleconference in -- by saying, "Steve....I'm sorry. I know how you feel. But I'm her next of kin, and she talked about experimental treatments with me, her doctor and her lawyer a while ago, and she wanted me to make decisions like this."

"For once, your stubbornness has an absolute appeal," Tony muttered next to him, but Steve shook his head. The others teased him about being mulish, but he couldn't back something like this after what Wanda had done to them in Klaue's shipyard. What made it worse was that he knew -- they all knew, it was obvious -- becoming a part of the team and training and listening to them wasn't enough for her: this was how she wanted to atone.

None of them had talked very much about how the stone that had controlled Barton and others in New York was now in Vision's head, always visible, like some kind of beacon reminding them how much power he could command. Not just physical -- Ultron's powers, the horrors Wanda had unleashed in their heads, the abilities Strucker had brutally drawn out of the twins, those all came from what Thor had called the Mind Stone ("and all that's probably just its fingerpaintings from kindergarten," Tony had remarked). Vision was odd, but reassuring: soft-spoken, with almost no weight to his words, but almost always right, quietly submitting to the endless tests and scans Tony wanted to run but offering no explanations for the often frustrating, if not garbled, results. He wasn't a monster, and neither was Wanda, none of them were. But none of them could be easily controlled either. They were bound together by a silent, mostly personal agreement that largely consisted of loyalty and the knowledge, as Nat had told the politicians eager to find blame, that their strengths had to be used to defend the earth, not make it even more vulnerable than it already was. No wonder Tony had tried to replace them with an interlocking suit of empty drones, metal peacekeepers subject to the laws of physics and algorithms. But even that had "gone all Avengers," as Sam put it. 

They were in the Avengers upstate facility -- the Compound, Tony called it, with his typical self-mocking humour. "All the comforts of your not-home," he'd added, with private suites, offices, a heated indoor pool, inside/outside training facilities, a lap pool and even a grinder. At first it had made Steve about as twitchy as the fake SHIELD recovery room he'd first woken up in, here in the twenty-first century, but Tony had given him the framed dancing monkey drawing he'd last seen sometime during the war. "Why, thanks, Tony....thanks," he'd said awkwardly. Tony had shrugged. "Howard bought it in one of those price-no-object fits of his, he used to go into fugue states on ebay. There's boxes of the stuff -- _your_ stuff -- up at the house. I could bring 'em down here if you want -- it's your stuff." "Sure," Steve had managed, floored, but it turned out to be a mistake; the most important things hadn't survived, or been preserved, and even little trinkets he thought he recognized (a bent knife he had to pry open, a comb) reminded him of what was gone, what he'd lost. Some of it wasn't his -- Steve was pretty sure none of his socks had survived 1944 -- and some of it was outright fakes. Steve wasn't sure how to tell Tony Howard had probably wasted a lot of time and money on it all. He'd taped the boxes back up and wondered, not for the first time, about himself and Howard and Peggy, after Bucky's fall and before his own, and what might have happened....

Vision's low, clear, suspiciously soothing voice, so like and unlike JARVIS'S, snapped him out of it. Tony was sitting next to Steve, as far from Vision as he could get and still be at the same table. He always had the whole table, or the length of the room, between them, and was quietly, scarily polite, never looking him in the eye. He typically flat out ignored Wanda, who was off to the side, not sitting with the rest of them; quiet, waiting, hopeful, dangerous. When Vision spoke, Tony flinched, so minutely Steve would never have been noticed if he hadn't been so close he could feel Tony's body warmth, a shield of heat minutely increasing as fine drops of sweat gathered at his hairline. He wanted to say something, make some comforting gesture, but everyone was looking at him again and he had to convince Vision, convince all of them, this was the rare terrible idea that they shouldn't grab and run with towards the goalposts.

"It _is_ your choice, Captain Rogers," Vision repeated, his voice warm, almost human, but with those damn weird overtones in it. He'd been saying that all morning -- that Steve had a choice, to help, or not. Only this was going to happen with or without him, wasn't it, so what kind of choice was that? No choice. He'd known all the time he'd go along with them, anyway; they all knew it, it wasn't like he could leave Peggy alone with this. But he was damned if he'd go down easy -- like always. _Make them fight for it._ Make them pay for every landed hit, every drop of blood.

After SHIELD'S fall, Tony had moved Peggy up to the compound with them all, with Sharon's full approval; there was a medical wing, with a lab, several labs, doctors and researchers Tony had poached from various private and government hospitals and research institutions, even an operating theatre. Steve never went near it, and Peggy didn't live there. She had her own set of rooms, on her own floor, with a live-in caretaker and dedicated nurse and a doctor who visited every day and a dietitian and pet neurologist and God only knew what else. Everyone had expected her to improve, after she'd been rescued from the SHIELD-run nursing home; people had even murmured about how _suspicious_ it was that her brilliant memory had begun to slip perhaps almost exactly when....But Peggy hadn't responded to the new drugs, the experimental treatments, the constant monitoring and her new bed in the new sleeping area which had originally been the suite's living room. She tried to roam constantly after sunset, and a few times, to everyone's horror, even made it out somehow past the nurse _and_ guards to the building elevator. It happened sometimes, Sharon had said: if you moved them somewhere new, even if it was better, they deteriorated, often quickly. Her voice was soft but clinical, detached, understanding. Steve had clenched his fists hard behind his back. Sharon smiled sadly, as if she could read his mind. "It's not your fault," he said staunchly. "We couldn't leave her there." Sharon shook her head.

Peggy no longer recognized Steve. Even in her worst days, back in DC, when she'd forgotten him in the moment it took him to turn away to get her a glass of water, she always remembered his face, cried out in joy and pain at seeing him alive again, restored to her, resurrected. As far as Sharon could figure, Peggy's working memory was stalled in 1947 or maybe 1948: before SHIELD, before she was married, before her children, before Howard had died and Steve had come back. Before, when she'd seen Steve, after the shock of his rebirth, his existence had slowly led her back into her own life: marriage, children, grandchildren, Sharon, SHIELD, the Cold War, Tony's birth. Never all the way back to the present, and not for long. But now she was constantly agitated unless she could see him, but when he came into the room, she deteriorated from restless and irritable to pacing and shouting, sometimes seeming almost psychotic, demanding where was he, where had he gone? She needed him -- where had he gone? She wasn't even trapped in the past anymore, she was shut out from her own memories, lost in a thick fog that was only increasing day by day. Steve had thought the worst thing he would ever have to do would be to sit and watch her stare at him, desperately trying to crack the code of eyes, nose, mouth (and he would do it, it was necessary, of all times _now_ he couldn't leave her -- ) while she accused him of being a stranger, an impostor. But that had been before Vision and Wanda had decided they would help.

"Does _Peggy_ have a choice?" Steve asked bitterly -- something he'd repeated the past couple of days. As usual, nobody answered him.

Perhaps sensing capitulation, real but buried underneath resistance, and eventual victory, Vision took a different tack. "Do you know, I don't know what this is?" he asked Steve gently, rubbing the glowing yellow thing in his forehead Steve had been trying not to stare at. "Not....not really. I know it's not of this world, that it powered Loki's staff, brought Ultron -- and myself -- to life, enslaved minds, gave Wanda her abilities, but....its true nature is a mystery." Steve felt Tony sigh heavily but almost noiselessly next to him, and resisted the urge to put a restraining hand on his arm. "And yet, it is part of me. We may fear it. But -- should we not try to understand it? Even to use it? To explore its possibilities." Now he was looking at Tony. "Science _is_ exploration....the willingness to push past boundaries. All of us" -- he gestured gracefully, his hand making a half-circle around the table, and Steve felt Tony suppress a shudder again -- "have been changed. Most of us against our will. Some of us....have been hurt greatly. Change is never an easy process. But if resisted....that refusal to accept possibilities is not only painful. But perhaps dangerous."

"That's never gonna fit on a fortune cookie," Tony said. Steve kicked him under the table. "Ow! Did you just kick me? He just kicked me. Captain America just kicked me. I'm shocked. Talk about painful and danger -- "

"Let's just run through this one more time," Sam said. He and Rhodey were both seated on the same side of the table, opposite Sharon and Natasha and Maria, both in that same ex-military pose that made their spines straight lines barely touching the backs of their chairs, arms folded in front of them. Sam had been a technical sergeant, and he ran over all the Stark-inspired plans of their barely-civilian, not-quite-vigilante enterprise with the weary expertise that was the hallmark of every NCO Steve had ever known. He thought, as he had countless times before, how unfair it was Sam could never meet Bucky so they could bitch together about how Goddamn reckless and completely foolish he was. Rhodey's expressions were less open, the habitual mask of a black man who had not only served but excelled in the white man's army. Rhodey, bizarrely, sometimes reminded Steve of his own mother -- not any physical resemblance but the way he held himself in, listening and judging, knowing his own acuity and also knowing how little it could be valued in the outside world. Right now his expression resembled Sarah's when she had listened to a doctor who was convinced Steve wouldn't make it through the night (there had been a number of those), knowing she would have to convince him to write a prescription. "You know, just explain like I'm five," Sam said helpfully, and Tony laughed under his breath.

Vision explained once again, with his inhuman patience, what little they knew about the Mind Stone: how, thanks to the work of Mr Stark and Dr Banner ("I'm a doctor too," Tony muttered to Steve, "I have three doctorates, I could be Doctor Doctor Doctor -- ") they knew that it contained a highly advanced intelligence framework, perhaps something like an incredibly powerful organic supercomputer. This in itself would be enough to consider the network within it sentient, and that sentience had been given to Ultron and Vision. If channeled correctly -- "or, rather, incorrectly" -- it could influence minds, from subtle suggestions to brute force, and it could be used to "mind travel," projecting a single consciousness far into space. (Steve felt something against his foot, and absently moved it away.) "Dr Selvig and Agent Barton, while their minds were....compelled, both received not just large quantities of specific data but also analyses of schematics, analytical _abilities,_ although these did not persist after the influence was removed, and while there was no physical damage, the emotional trauma was considerable...." Something pressed against the side of Steve's shoe again, and he shifted in his seat, annoyed, without really registering it. 

"But you can use it to blow shit up," Sam said flatly, arms still folded, and Rhodey nodded minutely along with his words. "Throw people around, hold up buildings, and you can....phase. And Pietro could.... _move."_

Vision nodded. "The energy of the Stone can be released in controlled explosions, or concentrated beams -- weaponized, in short. With the Maximoff twins" -- Wanda shrank a little in her chair -- "Pietro's manipulation of his own body was enhanced, giving him not just speed but possibly the ability to resonate, shall we say, between energy and matter. And Wanda has telekinetic powers, as we have all seen" -- Steve realized _Tony_ was what, playing footsie with him? and yanked his chair a couple of inches away, making the legs scrape along the floor. People glanced over; Tony winked. "But also the possibility of altering _minds._ The line between flesh and thought, electrical-neuro-chemical impulses and emotions, is extraordinarily thin. There is the possibility of altering the amyloid process in Director Carter's brain, clearing away the damage already done -- remove the existing physical plaques, without surgery, and stop plaque production, manipulating the chemicals involved in information processing. But this would not 'merely' be a type of highly advanced neurosurgery," Vision said, and went on about Einstein and the exchange of energy and matter and how the study of memory had long proven that it was possible to not only implant 'false' memories in a mind, but convince the subject those memories were real. Tony tapped his foot very gently against Steve's toes, not the obnoxious earlier bumping. Steve refused to move away and give Tony the satisfaction of knowing he'd gotten to Steve, again.

"SHIELD tried it before -- it won't work. You can't fool her," he protested again, but felt himself winding down. This was the last argument, pro forma, before they would do whatever they wanted, and drag him along. No, that wasn't true; he would come along of his own free will, such as it was, because he couldn't leave her again, not to the twin horrors of full-blown psychosis or near-unconscious sedation. And not to Wanda maybe _directly messing around in her brain,_ either. He would stand guard as long as he could.

"Nobody would be fooling her," Vision said in that voice that seemed to hum gently right in the sutures of Steve's skull. "But if Wanda were to create a false memory, one that had not actually happened, and use it as a kind of bridge to access the memories that -- " He actually seemed to stumble, looking from face to face of the three people Wanda had implanted memories -- _resonating thoughts_ \-- in already. Only Natasha looked back at him, her face smooth and unreadable.

"Hokay," Tony said, "since he's the boss and I just pay for everything and design everything and make everyone look cooler, and it is my name on the side of the big building, I say thee nay. Veto. I got my big black pen allll ready."

"It's not up to a vote," Sharon repeated, but a sour tone in her voice seemed to add, as she gazed at Tony: _especially not by you._

"Captain Rogers," Vision said, "if the -- "

"Oh, stop," Steve said wearily. "Just....stop talking. Get it all set up, it's fine. I'll do it." And Goddamn him for agreeing to it, and Goddamn the two of them for asking him, when they knew he couldn't say no, not after the past week where Peggy couldn't be awake for more than ten minutes without starting to scream. He pushed away from the table and turned to go, Tony not rising with him and everyone else, staying stubbornly seated and -- whatever Sharon said -- outvoted.

* * *

Steve had halfway expected it -- the procedure, experiment, whatever it was -- to take place in the medical wing, but it turned out Peggy's living room-now-bedroom was big enough to hold all the essential medical personnel plus the non-medical dubiously essential personnel, because all the chairs and bookshelves and bureaus and sofas had been removed to storage so she could be taken care of there. It wasn't a barren room -- there were a few kilim rugs hung on the walls, colourfully patterned curtains over the blinds, a giant flatscreen monitor that retracted into the ceiling and looked like a hanging piece of iron avant-garde sculpture --but the wood floors were bare, there were no sharp edges on the state-of-the-art space age hospital bed, and even the corners and edges of the walls were softly rounded. Nor was the room filled with sterile noisy mysterious medical equipment. There were clear monitors by the head of Peggy's bed that could be expanded to virtual displays, a few cabinets also by the head of the bed with wires trailing into notched drawers or neatly tucked behind cabinet drawers with open holes instead of knobs or pulls, a many-branched IV stand that was clear glass and white metal so it faded into the surrounding walls, but all of the many silver-framed pictures and family cards and perfume bottles and flower vases Peggy always liked having around her were long gone. 

Steve fidgeted nervously in the hallway just outside the door as they went through the final setup. Nat and Maria were standing guard outside, along with some burlier armed male guards -- ex-SHIELD? SI? Military? Steve didn't know -- and Rhodey was down the hall, suited up except for the helmet, Tony next to him. Wanda, Vision, Sharon, and a few doctors and nurses were already around Peggy's bed; one nurse flushed the drugs from her blood with saline while Wanda held her in a web of quiet more unnerving than the extreme stillness caused by the Hulk-sized trank doses that had been keeping her calm. "Thought you might be up to your elbows in your workshop, Tony," Steve said, unable to stand the strained quiet any longer. Tony glanced at him, surprised, then shrugged and looked away. Steve heard how it must have sounded to him -- an accusation of uncaring, selfish absorption, rather than an intended joke about displaced worry -- and winced. Sam, close by his side, made his already customary _yeah, you two got stuff to work out_ grimace. Rhodey cleared his throat.

Maria checked her watch -- a surprisingly old-fashioned one, with thin leather straps and a delicate small face -- and sighed. "Nat thinks we should wait for Clint," she reminded Steve, not for the first time.

"Nat does think," Natasha agreed, smiling slightly. "But she wants to help, so I'm in. Besides, the hospital wants to keep Nate another night to make sure the fever doesn't come back while they're at home, and they're all piled in his room with pillows and blankets. It wasn't serious. But he's not leaving." She pulled out her Starkphone and tapped a few times on its side, and a crystalline image hung in the air in front of them, the size of one of Steve's coffeetable art books: it showed Laura asleep, fully clothed to her shoes, in a hospital bed with pull-down sides, Nate cradled in her arms against her breast. The sides were pulled down and Cooper was on one side of her, Lila on the other, both of them in footie pajamas, Lila clutching a doll so tightly all Steve could make out was its head of red hair at one end and black boots at the other. Clint's left hand was at the bottom of the picture, making the thumbs-up sign with his fingers curled in. Steve noticed, for maybe the first time -- it was probably the clarity of the image -- how worn and weathered his hands were, showing pale stripes and curves of old scars, the raised veins and tendons like cables, even the leather half-glove white and fraying at the seams. For some reason it made him better to see Clint watching over his little family, which was probably why Natasha was showing it to him. He nodded and smiled at her, _thank-you_ and _I-see-what-you-did-there,_ and caught a glimpse of Tony's face as he looked at the picture too. It always amazed Steve that eyes as dark as Tony's, like black coffee, could be so expressive and guarded at the same time. He thought he saw maybe wistfulness, a soft jealousy, and even a touch of fear, before Nat glanced at the doorway behind him and said "They're ready."

Steve looked and saw the nurse by Peggy's bedside turn her hand palm up to check the watch face worn on the inner aspect of her wrist, a gesture which never failed to remind him of his mother no matter how many times he saw it. She pulled over what looked like an empty stand, rapidly moved her fingers as if she were playing scales, and it turned out to be a tablet-sized display hooked up to Peggy's IV and probably other unseen machines. He kept expecting to smell the brutal hospital mix of antiseptics and disinfectant and wondering what was wrong when he couldn't, which was like stepping on a stair that wasn't there in the middle of the night. He hesitated, wanting to say something to Tony -- an apology, a reassurance about Clint and his family, that he knew Tony had their backs and would defend them no matter what -- and Tony, characteristically, felt the emotions hanging in the air and batted at them like a cat. "Back to your future, Cap!" he said brightly, and Rhodey shook his head. "The _good ol'_ days, hunh?"

"He wouldn't know, actually, and neither would you," Rhodey quietly pointed out, and Sam snorted and Steve grinned. Sam clapped him on the shoulder and said "C'mon, Buck Rogers," not quite pulling him into the room, and Steve felt such a change in pressure he half expected his ears to pop as he stepped through the door. Wanda sat on one side of Peggy's bed, Vision and Sharon on the other. The lighting in the room had somehow changed: it shifted from a kind of reflected soft pink tint on the walls nearest the door to a dark rose by the head of the bed, as if they were inside a conch shell. There seemed to be odd sparkles at the edge of his vision everywhere that disappeared when he tried to look straight at them. Nobody had shut the door, but the sounds from the hallway were cut off. Wanda was holding Peggy's hand, and two modern chairs with chrome legs and sweeping padded curves were drawn up next to her. Steve stared at the little ritualistic setup, suspicious all over again. He was trying to think of a non-accusatory way to ask _What are you going to do?_ when she answered him, placidly; she seemed much more calm and sure of herself, now, than she had during the earlier discussion around the table.

"Please, Steve, Sam, sit....here, there, yes. Vision gave you the technical details.... _all_ the technical details." From the tone of her voice, she might have been smiling, but her face remained still. "Part of what I....we....will be doing with the stone, is what he talked about, biological and chemical actions in Peggy's brain, trying to remove plaques, repair damage already done, prevent it in the future. But the brain, and the mind....they are not separate." She looked Steve fully in the eyes for the first time since she'd begun talking, and he saw beneath the facade again how young she was, how naive in some ways and disillusioned in others, and tried to smile at her. "Memories are made, and remade....they're not chiseled on tablets of stone, or even written with ink on paper. They are dynamic; they are linked to each other; thoughts affect the brain, and the opposite. To....repair Peggy's _memories,_ so to speak, to graft new ones -- _not_ only false ones -- to repair broken links, there must be new material. You and she....shared memories. Shared time together. If I could form a _new_ memory...."

"I'm not going to pretend we got married, or had kids or went to Paris for our honeymoon," Steve said, trying not to snap at her. "I won't do that to her."

"No, Steve, no -- not anything like that. Not an illusion. Not something untrue. But if there was something special, between the two of you, like a talisman, something you had always meant to do, referred to often -- as a kind of a sym -- "

"The Goddamn dance," Steve broke in, losing the fight to keep his temper. "You don't have to spoon-feed me, all right? Everybody heard that -- final time we -- on the radio, we never did dance. Not once. That work?"

"Yes," Wanda said apologetically. "It would be....perfect. I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's....I'm sorry. You're trying to help, hell, you're trying to _fix...._ To help. It's just....it's hard." ("I cannot believe you are going to let her back into your cerebellum _again,"_ Sam had told him the night before. "You get crazier every day, do you eat bad ideas for breakfast or what? If you start going on about empty ballrooms and people vanishing, I'm gonna fly you the hell out of there. Whether I got my wings on or not.")

Sharon had been silent through all this; Steve looked across the bed at her, noticing for the first time a new colourful bedspread between them. "Are you -- are you sure -- is it okay, if it's not you?"

Sharon pressed her lips together in the gesture he knew meant she wouldn't let herself cry, and said, "No, Steve, I was born too late. She doesn't remember me. Sometimes she thinks I'm my mother, or a friend of her mother's. It wouldn't work. You're...."

.... _the only one left._ Last man standing, left out of time. Steve nodded. "Let's do it." He let himself look at Peggy, then, whispering apologies in his mind; her long silver hair was neatly plaited and pinned up, and someone, he saw with surprise, had painted her nails. They were clipped short and filed down, but a lovely dark red colour with a kind of glow to it, like rose petals. Vision took one of Peggy's hands, holding it loosely but carefully, and Wanda the other. Steve looked at the quilt, which had an almost random but repeated pattern in red white and blue of....stars, that was it. "Penrose tiles," Sharon said. "Tony designed it."

Wanda held out her hand to him, and he folded it in his, which made her fingers look tiny; to his surprise they were very cold. He tried smiling at her again and made a better job of it. "You'll do fine," he told her. "We trust you." Wanda ducked her head, biting her lip, and then said, "If you would like Sam to be....there, you should hold his hand too. It's easier for me to maintain the connection that way. -- Sharon will be able to see -- we think -- but not participate."

Sam held out his hand, palm up, to Steve with a coquettish look; Steve sighed and wrapped his fingers around Sam's. Sam immediately squeezed his tight, not a macho break-your-bones asshole squeeze, but a nonverbal message: _not letting you go._ Steve smiled and almost whispered, "On your left," and Sam chuckled -- that sweet easy sound immediately putting Steve's spirits more at ease. _It's for Peggy,_ he thought. _We have to help Peggy, any way we can._

"Close your eyes," Wanda said, and "We're starting now," Vision echoed her, pitching his voice to carry. From the hallway, Steve heard Natasha -- he'd nearly forgotten all about her -- call back, "Roger that," muffled as if they were ten feet underwater, and Steve tried not to think of exploding flashbulbs and angry men shouting and blood spilling like thick wine, [the ghost of music echoing around an empty dancefloor where he stood alone.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtO-o7je9hU) He squeezed Sam's hand again, and closed his eyes -- he was no longer sitting, and there was a kind of portal hanging in the air in front of him; it shimmered, mirrory, its surface liquid and shivering. He opened his eyes immediately and looked at Sam, who nodded. Sam was on his right side -- that seemed like a good omen. He closed his eyes again, and thought of Peggy's young face with her bombshell lipstick and bulletproof curls, of Sharon watching him go where she couldn't follow, of Nat and Tony out in the hall, standing guard. When he opened them again he knew it had worked: they had gone through.

"I thought the Stork Club would be a little.... _bigger,"_ Sam said beside him; they were no longer holding hands, and were both dressed in SSR uniforms, complete with insignia. Steve glanced down at his chest; if he wanted to remember he was in some kind of fucked-up dreamworld, all he had to do was check his pins; they were straighter than even Bucky had ever managed. Sam looked down at himself too, then over at Steve, his expression growing mutinous. "Wait a damn minute. You got jump wings? When did _you_ go to jump school?"

"Back then all you had to do was make a combat jump," Steve said, trying to walk confidently to the door with a bit of swagger. "I did that when we went and got Bucky -- shhh." It wasn't like anyone could somehow overhear two soldiers from the future who didn't belong, since technically there was no one else _here,_ but he wanted to play the part. The doorman stood stoically in his long coat with tails and high hat underneath the heavy green canopy with its almost insultingly simple lettering: [S T O R K C L U B.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/82/07/52/820752af33f7bea5bde4e61067efe518.jpg) The front of the building was nondescript, made up of big grey blocks and few windows, but there was the grinning bouncer holding back the famous 14K gold chain barring entrance, thick as a rope, and a rush of cigar and cigarette smoke and cologne and heavy perfume, with an undertone of cooked and fried chicken carrying up from the basement kitchen. Steve and Sam smiled and excused themselves through a crowded but not jammed hallway, Sam grinning at the pretty girls -- flirtatious cigarette girls with their skirts so short their Camel and Black Cat branded trays seemed balanced at the tops of their long legs, bored coat check girls leaning over their counters -- "Come on," Steve said, leading the way into the long L-shaped bar, with thirty feet of glaring, almost blinding mirror at its far end. He braced himself but the champagne corks, one going off about every five minutes, just sounded like champagne corks: loud, but nothing like an explosion. "The dancing was in the dining room -- right through here. They might be in the Cub Room, but that's too small, and I hope you don't have to go, 'cause the men's room's on the third floor."

Sam stared at him. "How do you know? You ever -- come here, by yourself?"

They were trapped behind a woman in a truly enormous feathered hat, or maybe a couple of women in feathered hats; it was hard to tell, this close up. Steve shook his head. "I heard about it, everybody did -- but it was just this -- famous symbol, you know. Got torn down in sixty-five. I don't know if she ever visited....didn't really want to ask." He had a pretty good idea the tabloid press of the time would have made a meal and a half out of Peggy Carter showing up to sadly wait for her never-appearing lover, Captain America, like something out of a song, and she would have loathed everything about that. But possibly Howard had taken her here, later -- probably Howard had been the one to tell her about it in the first place, since from what he'd read about the club, it had been the last word in urban glamour, extreme fame and wealth, elegance without snobbery, a kind of mile-high life Steve had only been able to imagine as a fairy tale. The owner's storied largesse with bottles of champagne, flasks of perfume, plates of caviare and oysters, was like Howard's generosity, too. And he would have been amused at the difference of one letter between its name and his -- Steve could imagine him threatening to buy the place and rename it, before leaving his favourite cigarette girl a thousand-dollar personal check as a tip. 

But probably Howard wouldn't have bought the place for a nickel, because he couldn't stand things that were poorly designed. Sam began to cluck as they slow-marched through the bar, silvered glass and bright reflections and chiming glasses on one side, a rising tide of conversation on the other, the perfume and smoke almost drowned out by the big fresh-cut gladioli blooming every few feet along the bar, reflected in the mirrors and echoed back from the large vases on every table. Captains stood at the top of their designated stations, posture as straight as military officers, watching as busboys darted back and forth like minnows and waiters smoothly followed along in their wake. "The owner kept buying out the other tenants in the building and renovating," Steve explained to Sam, keeping his voice low -- even the diners were murmuring, nobody having to shout over the small, relatively quiet band, and there were no miked singers or background music turned up to mask street and kitchen noise. "That's why it doesn't have a big grand staircase, or a big stage, or a couple of dancefloors -- "

"Or room sizes that make sense," Sam said as they turned into the main dining room, packed with small tables seating three or four draped in satin, backed up against each other, with more flowers on the tables and against the mirrored walls and columns, the walls draped in yellow velvet with swags of dark blue velvet above. The lights were full on, there were no candles, and the only semi-demi-private areas were the banquettes against the far end. For the ultimate in glitz, it was crowded; cramped, even. The men, all of them, were dressed in suits with jackets and ties, the women wore hats and skirts that came to just below the knee when they stood up. "You all couldn't have gone for the Cotton Club," Sam went on. "This place looks like Graceland, with taste." 

"I know what Graceland was...okay look, see down there? At the far end, where the tables kinda stop? No, before the mirrors....yeah. That's where the dancing was."

 _"No way_ could people dance in here -- "

"Yeah they can, right there -- see? The tables are pushed back, that's all. It's not raised up. And the guy who ran this place loved servicemen, and if this is right after -- after the war, that's where they'll be. He'd give them the best seats."

Up until then, it had felt _strange_ \-- partly it was the sense of being in a historical, reconstructed place, like a living diorama -- but not like the previous visions Wanda had forced on them all, the waking nightmares. But now, in the best of traditions, the room seemed to get longer and narrower, the smoke pluming up from the famous black-and-white ashtrays thickened, the chairs and tables forced ever closer together, and Steve began to feel like Gulliver. All that needed to happen was for the enormous bouquets of forsythia, flaming upwards from every table here, to turn into a thorny forest. Sam was so close behind him he could smell his aftershave (was that real, or a provided detail? Was he really smelling Sam's scent, back in the not-hospital room with Peggy and Vision and Wanda and Sharon, and God only knew what they were making of all this, the solid-gold cigarette holders and seventy-seven-year-old brandy at four dollars a glass, it was like a fever dream of F. Scott Fitzgerald's). Steve glanced at his watch: it was eight o'clock, on the dot. "Yeah," Sam said, right in his ear, "I got that too." Steve asked a passing waiter for the time, and then asked another man in uniform holding a chair out for a girl in a bright blond pageboy and little black silk dress. It was as if they'd all synched up, right before a mission. "I was kinda hoping we could build up to the creepy," Sam muttered, and took hold of Steve's elbow. That felt real and solid enough. The suppressed band, shoved all the way back into a deep corner off the dance floor, was doing a quiet but syncopated instrumental of _Don't -- sit under the --_ ap- _ple tree -- with anyone else but me, oh -- no no no-no...._ It all wavered when he heard Peggy's voice, young and strong, call out "STEVE! Oh, Steve -- look, there he is, finally -- _Steve...."_ and the people in between the tables and the tables themselves and the flowers and the music itself all drew apart, like curtains, to reveal her perched on the rounded back of a chair, one arm supporting her and the other wildly waving, a beacon in her red dress with the low wide V-neck and its contrasting collar.

* * *

"I don't like this," Sam said, low and urgent, right behind him, "something's _wrong,_ Steve, did you hear that?" but Steve shook off his arm and walked forward, like a sailor marching off his ship for the first kiss. He stood in front of her, nearly at eye level, and she flung her arms around his neck, nearly falling off the back of the chair. "Peggy," he said, "Peggy," and buried his face in her curls, probably destroying the careful work of several hours, but she wouldn't give a damn. His mouth found her neck, her face, her lips. _Peggy, Peggy...._ He lifted her carefully down from the chair and set her on the floor as if she were a china doll; she laughed and socked him in the arm, hard enough it stung. He grinned at her, rubbing the spot. "Now I know it's not a dream."

"Oh, shall I pinch you? I used to be quite a pincher. Michael showed me some very effective self-defense moves -- apparently there's a group of major nerves called the brachial plexus, right under -- "

"Ix-nay on the inch-pay, oh-kay?" Howard said, standing up at the next table. "At least until you two are alone. Some of us don't need the anatomy lessons." He leered at Peggy, who mock-simpered back.

"Howard," Steve breathed. "Howard?"

Howard clapped a hand to his chest and pretended to fall over backward. "Oh, _Steve!_ You're _alive!"_ he said, in a truly dreadful Mockney accent he tried to turn shrill, but sounded as if he had laryngitis instead. Peggy aimed a low kick at him. "But I looked everywhere! Under the sofa and _behind_ the sofa and I lifted the sofa cushions _up_ and everything," Howard went on, dropping back into his normal register and moving easily out of range, as if they were practicing dance moves. Peggy laughed and put her head on Steve's shoulder, wrapping her arms around him, and Steve understood that this had become a cherished joke among all of them -- that here, somehow, Howard had found him -- Peggy had put him on the trail of Steve's coordinates, or his clever, clever mind had come up with some kind of new radar, a way to trace the Tesseract, _something,_ anything, Howard would find it -- and they now mocked one of the worst events in their lives as if it were meaningless, in joyous relief, driving away past horror by cutting it down to nothing. 

"Maybe you weren't looking _that_ hard after all, Howard!" a voice shouted from the next table over -- Dum Dum, of course it was him, and Steve knew Monty and Gabe and Morita and Dernier were there. Howard made an _et tu, Brute_ face, and Steve laughed. He heard someone else shouting his name, but ignored it, setting her a little distance away from him so he could look into her face, and said "Dance with me, Peggy."

"I thought I'd never hear you say that," she said, her voice brave, but there were tears on her cheeks. The band had been quiet for a while, maybe not wanting to be drowned out by their reunion, but now they both heard the clear sweet opening notes, over the syncopated orchestra chords, of _There'll be blue birds over, the white cliffs of Dover...._ He felt rather than heard her gasp soundlessly. "Was this our song, for you?" he asked. "Did you hear this and think about you and me?"

She nodded, swaying a little against him as if they were already dancing. "I couldn't listen to it for a long time," she said, so quietly he could barely hear her above the soft music. "So long, oh, for so long, Steve...." 

"I'm here now," he said, and gently walked her to the jam-packed dance floor -- really just a cleared space big enough for twenty, maybe twenty-five couples, all dancing closely together and paying as much attention to the next persons' feet as their own -- and waited for an opening to slip into, just as the vocal line began.

Peggy was uncharacteristically draped over him, every taut muscle relaxed, the lines of her loose and slack. He held her right hand in his, tightly as he could, up against his heart, and pressed his left against the small of her back, molding her to him. They barely moved. He heard Howard say something just under the music, heard the Howlies laughing with him, but Peggy tucked her head under his chin and he closed his eyes. 

"What was your song for me, Steve?" she asked him, as the number drew to a close. He felt the vibrations of her voice against his chest, through his uniform.

With no surprise he heard Eddie Heywood's soft piano intro, and then one held chord, the trombone, alto sax and trumpet blending perfectly -- and the opening words, sung in the sweetest, saddest tones you ever heard, a voice that broke and healed your heart and broke it again in one measure of music. "This one," he said, as Billie Holiday sang with infinite rue and love, _I'll be seeing you....,_ the little lilt on "seeing" idiosyncratic, perfect.

Peggy chuckled as Billie's voice dipped down, low and knowing, on _"wish_ ing well," and said, "Oh, you loved her too....I used to wonder, and then after you came back, I don't think I ever asked you. This one's brilliant, even though it's so sad...."

"It's not sad," he said. "Not anymore." He gently stroked her hair, the dark brown now streaked with brilliant silver, loving it because it meant all the time they had spent together, dancing like this on their anniversaries, public and private, the years drowned and lost returned to them shining and whole, not salvaged but rescued.

He had felt reality slipping, dimly, under his feet just a little at a time for minutes now, but this slippage wasn't abrupt and violent, like in Wanda's earlier nightmare -- the already too-full room had started to fill up, not with ghosts, but the dead, resurrected. He thought he caught a glimpse of Bucky over Peggy's head, smiling and saluting once with a flesh-and-blood left hand, and shut his eyes tight, shaking his head. _Sam,_ he thought wildly, _Sam --_ and looked around to see a tall, handsome blonde man with an asshole grin who must have been Riley. Seated across from each other at a table edging onto the dance floor, Howard and Tony toasted each other, with mocking smiles -- good God, they could have been brothers, with the same great dark eyes, quickly flashing in his direction, and they toasted Steve too. Steve wondered if Tony's mother -- and as he thought _mother_ he saw Sarah in front of him, in her one good (decently black) dress, only a little shabby at the seams. There was no screaming, no violence, but it all went sideways, literally, and Sam caught him with a bruising grip before he fell. 

Steve opened his eyes and the gorgeous, gaudy club was gone; Peggy was lying in front of him in her hospital bed, her eyelids like creased tissue paper and her chest rising and falling slowly and shallowly as a kitten's. Sharon was all right, across from him, although she was openly sobbing without trying to hide it which he guessed happened maybe never, and he tried reaching out to her but Sam had a death grip on both his upper arms, was shouting in his face: _Steve! Steve --_

"I'm all right," he tried to say, but the words wouldn't come out, even as a croak or a whisper. His throat ached as if it had been hit. He swallowed, painfully, and tried again. "Sam. Sam. It's all right." Sam stared at him, not letting go, and then Steve had to have a coughing fit. "On your left," he wheezed, when he could breathe fully again, "left," and Sam got it, nodding, and relaxed. With Sam's help, he stood up. The Penrose tiling stars from Peggy's quilt flowed across the floor and tried to trip his feet.

"Is it -- the stone -- is it alive? Is it messing with everyone like this? What _happened?"_

Sam pointed with his chin, his face grim, and Steve looked and saw the bare room, stripped down to medical necessities, but he also saw Wanda, and then Pietro, smiling and younger; they were looking at mirroring, matching faces, their parents as they had been when they were young, and Steve remembered Sarah's unlined face and shining hair. Wanda and her mother had the same deep mahogany hair, like wood with a red grain in it, and Pietro's and his father's hair colour was only a few shades lighter. Steve had never seen family members who so resembled each other. Candlelight cast deep shadows on all their faces, carving out spaces below their eyes and cheekbones, and Steve remembered Sarah reading -- a real memory, not a resurrected one -- _we shall all be changed, in an instant: in the twinkling of an eye._

Natasha's red hair was bright in contrast to Wanda's; she briefly glanced at him and Sam (who was still hanging on to Steve's arm like grim death), and then knelt in front of Wanda, who was sprawled on the floor, sobbing. She began speaking in low, compelling, soothing tones, like a mother, and took Wanda's face between her hands gently, making her look up. Steve could feel his arm going numb underneath Sam's hand and tried working his shoulder back and forth. The bright pink light was fading from the air, thinning like a mist. "Sam," he said. "Sam. Let go. It's okay. Sam." Natasha wiped tears from beneath Wanda's eyes with both thumbs, smiling sadly, and asked her something, nodding; Wanda tried to smile back, her whole mouth badly trembling, and nodded back, jerkily at first, then with more assurance. Natasha put her hands on Wanda's shoulders, squeezing, then helped her up. Steve wriggled his fingers, trying to get the circulation going again, and saw Rhodey blocking both Tony and Maria at the door. Behind them all Peggy coughed, a light delicate scratching sound. Everyone froze.

Peggy coughed again, and later Steve swore he heard the nurse hit her breaking point -- he'd seen it often enough with his mother, when she decided _Enough of all this foolishness_ and began herding people out of a sickroom like frightened sheep. This nurse -- he thought it was the one he'd seen checking her watch earlier -- had the same no-nonsense fed-up tone: "All right, everyone out, please. The only people who need to be in here are my patient and the necessary medical personnel. The _necessary - medical - personnel,"_ she said to Vision, who looked mortified, and even blushed momentarily, turning a deep salmon. Steve felt Sam and Nat hauling him along like a sack of bricks -- ahead of him, Rhodey was towing Maria and Tony -- and he looked back to see Vision comforting Wanda in the hallway, motionless, her head buried in his chest. He guessed Sharon had asked to stay with Peggy, or maybe nobody had had the heart to throw her out. But then Sharon herself appeared in the doorway, trying to wave them back, the nurse standing behind her. "Steve?" she called, her voice alight with hope or even joy. "Steve -- "

"Captain Rogers, she's asking for you," the nurse said.

Steve stepped away from Sam and Nat, pulling himself upright. "I'm okay -- really," he said. He coughed and cleared his throat hard, and took a few deep breaths, as if to demonstrate they could go on without him. Sam and Nat exchanged one look and paced behind him all the way back up the hall, stopping short just before the door. Tony and Rhodey were still arguing by the elevator. Steve realized he was chilled, that parts of his shirt were soaked through with sweat gone cold, and his stomach muscles ached. _What the fuck happened....whatever she did, whatever it was, it was worth it._ Peggy's hospital bed was moved up nearly all the way, she was almost upright, and her eyes met his, dark and knowing against her skin and hair made pale and slack with age. "Steve," she slurred; she sounded higher than a kite. Next to him, Sharon's hand grabbed Steve's arm with uncanny precision right at the spot where Sam had hauled him up and he shut his teeth on a groan. "Steve. You came back. They found you....and you came back."

He went slowly through the doorway, and said carefully, "I couldn't leave my best girl. Not when I owe her a....a...."

Peggy said slowly, "But we did have a dance."

"Yeah, Peg. We did." Beside him Sharon was crying again, but so quietly he thought Peggy might not notice. 

"It was...." Peggy's gaze drifted across him, to Sharon, and her face filled with concern. "Sharon. Darling. Whatever is the matter? Don't cry."

"I'm not -- it's -- I'm happy," Sharon said, starting to sob again, "oh, Aunt _Peggy -- "_ The nurse briskly moved forward, bringing Sharon into the room and shooing Steve out in the same motion, and delivered him back to Nat and Sam, finally, firmly closing the door behind them.

* * *

Everyone had crashed, more or less instantly. They had brought a bed for Sharon into Peggy's room, and she had insisted on another one for the nurse (named Clare, Steve learned), since she wouldn't leave either of them to go back to her own rooms a floor away. Tony had indeed gone down to his workshop to bury himself up to his elbows, after a short loud shouting match with Rhodey, who had made Tony lock his armour and then gone home to his own bed, like a sane person. Vision had left the compound with Wanda, exactly where nobody seemed to know, but no one was inclined to seek them out, either. (Later, Nat told him they had gone to meet Clint at the airport.) Sam had fallen asleep sitting up on one of the couches outside the Avengers mess, which was more like a very good small 24-hour cafe, a plate of pad see-ew balanced in his lap. Nat had put her head on his shoulder and drifted off a couple of moments before that. Steve, with Maria -- who still looked ready to either run a boardroom meeting or pass the combat endurance test, and he wondered what that privately cost her -- had wrestled them up to their respective guest suites and then Steve had kissed Maria on the cheek (she allowed it, like a cat letting you pet it under the chin) and passed out, fully clothed, besides Sam, not remembering to take his shoes off. Sam remained passed out through Steve's waking up, stretching the previous day's aches out of his muscles and his post-stretching forty-five-minute-long shower with achingly hot water, so Steve made sure his shoes were off, folded the blanket over him and tried drafting a note. Three tries and five crumpled balls of paper later, he settled unhappily on "Thanks" and a smiley face, underlined "Thanks" twice and anchored it with Sam's phone on the nightstand. After equally unhappily dressing in the clothes he'd gone to sleep in (it had been a while since he'd stayed here overnight, he didn't even keep a go bag here -- sloppy), he went in search of coffee; there was not only the cafe, but also a cheekily named Starkbucks in the main building's lobby, and he had recognized a barista the day before but hadn't had the time to say hello.

The Starkbucks was open, with Tony Stark as its only customer, sitting on the counter with one leg dangling down and the other bent at the knee close to his chest, arms folded, talking to the woman Steve had recognized as the blonde waitress he had met while sketching the first Stark Tower before the Battle of New York. Tony trash-talked Steve's sleep-creased clothing, his uncombed hair and choice of espresso blend before letting him chitchat a little with the girl, who was named Beth. (She had moved into the compound two years ago with her young son, had finished her B.A. and was now thinking about maybe getting an M.S.W.; a Stark employment scholarship fund had paid for her bachelor's, and she could apply again for more money.) At his most charming, Tony had finally said, "Well, I can't let you keep stealing my girl's heart away here; mind if I talk to you?" Because his voice went momentarily tight on the last two words, Steve said all right, before exchanging Starkphone numbers with Beth and posing for a selfie with her for her mother. 

"That's Beth," Tony said as they walked off, leading Steve out one of the glass window/doors that slid up and out, close to where new, bright growth marked the patterns Mjolnir had scorched onto the lawn. ("You're not reseeding it or whatever?" "No, I decided I like it -- gives the place a kind of mythic _je ne sais quoi._ Besides, in about twenty years it's gonna be a great labyrinth.") "You might....well no, you probably do remember her."

"I remember her," Steve agreed.

"Figures. Beth....Bethany Kent. I found her a couple years ago, made her an offer through the Maria Stark Relief Foundation -- it wasn't special treatment, she qualified," he added. "I tried to make sure everyone....everyone I could find got one. Cash if they wanted, job opportunities, scholarship, place to live....it doesn't make a dent, Cap. It doesn't _begin_ to make a dent."

"I believe it," Steve said wryly, looking around the beautiful grounds.

"She told me....she said, when they moved in here, she was _grateful,"_ Tony said, something dangerous behind his words. "Not just for the reduced rent, benefits, great pay. Daycare," he added. "Oh, all that was -- wonderful, whatever. She told me she _felt safe,_ Steve. That was what she said: she was _glad_ they were here, in this"-- he flung an arm out -- _"fortress,_ because her _son_ was _safe."_

"Tony -- " Steve began.

"You were right in the first place," Tony said flatly. "We never should've done this. That girl -- there have to be controls. I should never have let her try to do that -- I should have known. _We_ should have known."

 _"Tony!"_ Steve half-shouted. "It worked!" he said, far more sharply than he meant. "It worked -- we think it worked" -- Tony laughed unpleasantly -- "for Peggy, and Vision said there could be other applications -- for thousands of people! -- and real advances, in -- "

"Yes, it worked!" Tony shot back. "For now! _Maybe!_ But this kind of power -- Steve, we can't predict it, we can't quantify it, we can't _stop_ it -- "

"You can't do that with a lot of things, Tony. You can't put a suit of armour around -- everything -- "

"No. No." Tony shook his head violently. "What's gonna save us, is _science._ What happened in _there,_ that was some form of technology, we just don't have any idea of what it really was, so we're just playing around -- "

"Like you and Bruce did?" Steve asked, unable to stop himself. "Like you two were just playing around?"

Tony stared at him, his eyes dark and enormous in his pale face. Steve suddenly had a flash of him and Howard together in the Stork club, toasting each other across the table, and tried to clear his head of the past. He wondered if Tony had seen Howard somehow, through the door -- or his mother....

Steve sighed. "Tony," he tried again, more gently, "she's here. She can do things. So can Vision. We can't just....stick them in a box, or lock them in a lab. They're on the team. Remember -- the team?"

Tony shook his head again, but seemed calmer. He sipped at his cooled -- probably cold -- coffee, made a face, and tossed it out onto the grass. "We've got to do _something,"_ he said, sounding better. "Can you imagine if Ross got hold of her? He'd make von Strucker look like a piker."

"We won't let him," Steve promised. "She's just a kid -- "

"You know, I could maybe have done all this with VR?" Tony interrupted. "I had this idea last night, about something that would let you replay the worst things in your life, but over again -- like what Vision was talking about, rewriting the bad memories. But as real therapy, not some kind of....woowoo thing. Basically, if you hijack the hippocampus, you can clear the traumatic -- "

 _"Tony,"_ Steve snapped.

"That's my name and lovin's my game." Tony crumpled his coffee cup, tossed it up into the air, caught it. He tried doing it again, and Steve snatched it out of the air. "Showoff."

"It worked," Steve said again, as reasonably as he could. "It did work. It's a win." He put his hand on Tony's shoulder, feeling the tense muscle underneath the washed-threadbare shirt, and shook him back and forth lightly, once, twice. "We haven't gotten a whole lot of those lately. -- Did you get _any_ sleep?"

"Now you sound like Rhodey," Tony said, but he let Steve nudge him back towards the compound, drawing him closer to the doors.

"Rhodey's the only sane one around here."

"Yeah, well, you'll notice he's _not_ here."

"Like I said, he's the sane one," Steve said, and led him back inside to the warmth and light, the protected space enclosed within Tony's castle and surrounding the remnants of their still-sleeping team, who would soon wake up and be waiting for them.

**Author's Note:**

> Music in the memory palace Stork Club:
> 
> The Andrews Sisters with Harry James and His Music Makers, ["Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcyiC79l910) from _Private Buckaroo_ (1942)
> 
> Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, ["(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E36tO0TDwio) (1942)
> 
> Billie Holiday, ["I'll Be Seeing You"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l44_n60QQ8) (1944)  
> (Credits for "I'll Be Seeing You": Billie Holiday And Eddie Heywood And His Orchestra: "Doc" Cheatham, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Lem Davis, alto sax; Eddie Heywood, piano; John Simmons, bass; "Big Sid" Catlett, drums; Billie Holiday, vocals.)


End file.
